Reasons for this post
1. History is repeating itself over and over again...We are not learning and we are not getting humanized. Human GREED is overwhelming us and is becoming the deciding factor for our actions. The wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa are not remnant of lingering conflicts but the repetition of our actions from before...Greed is dictating and deciding ...
Some even are calling these World War III...
2. Epidemiology has fascinated me always...I love to research the origin of words...It is both educational and elucidating... I learn from my investigation so much...
Also,
Phrases and idioms amuse me...It is my sort of entertainment to play with words and have a laugh... Example: Why we say "Pretty much" when we mean "it is almost ... okay"? After all, Pretty refers to "pretty" things and not to "almost okay..."
These are things that amuse me and when I research these origins it is both educational and amusing...
Another example: The origin of Villa...?
In European history the highwaymen who robbed....were outcasts and were banished from the cities. So they had their home on the outskirts of the cities and since they had money their homes were huge and beautiful...
So "villa" is the dwelling of the highwaymen you kidnaps and robs...and "villain" is related to villa...too... In our usage "villa" assumed a positive connotation while "villain" maintained its negative background...
Fascinating history...and of course the example of the word genocide...is quite obvious, but still interesting...When we research the man who coined the word...
3. Some are drawing my attention to the fact that the topics posted on the blog are "sad"...Well, the world is not that happy a place to start with...
I may ignore the wars..., I am ignore the starvation and poverty..., I may ignore human greed and the huge profit that people make out of human trafficking and slavery..., I may ignore gender bias and exploitation of males and females for sexual gratification..., I may ignore the children who arrive hungry to school every morning..., I may ignore the "hallway kids" and wrap myself with the successes of the AP Calculus kids who attend university..., I may celebrate the good only and hope that the bad will somehow disappear...and may be it will...
But history tells us otherwise...The brutality of humans against each other has not disappeared, but rather changed its ways and means of delivery...
After the Armenian Genocide we witnessed the Jewish Holocaust... We witnessed the Ukrainian Famines...The Rwandan Genocide....The massacres in Darfur... The butchery in Iraq and Syria...and ALL just because of human greed...
I may ignore all these and the rest...I may say all is good...After all, I am retired and I am happy too...But will human misery disappear if I do not write about it...
I am pleased that some are continuing to read the blog posts...I can not force others to read them too...But I will write the way I feel and hope that it will make a difference for those who read it...I will not clown myself and say that all is well...
Even the stories in the Bible are sad...After all, there is the crucifixion of Christ...and that is a "sad" story...
But then, there is the RESURRECTION and that inspires us HOPE for the future...
I I hope for the future...I imagine that one day ALL PEOPLE will live in HARMONY...
But meanwhile... I will write about the GOOD and the BAD and the UGLY....and HOPE and IMAGINE...
That is why I will commemorate the birthday of Raphael Lamkin...
June 24, 1900
Raphael Lemkin
Born June 24, 1900 Bezwodne, Volkovysk, Grodno Governorate, Imperial Russia(now Belarus)
Died August 28, 1959 (aged 59) New York City, United States
Nationality Polish
Occupation Lawyer
Known for coining the term genocide and drafting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocid
June 24, 1900, is the birthdate of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-born Jewish lawyer who coined the word "genocide" and who, in 1951, almost single-handedly persuaded the newly created United Nations to
approve
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.
Lemkin's memoirs detail early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians (which most scholars believe constitute genocide), antisemitic pogroms, and other histories of
group-targeted violence as key to forming his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups. As early as 1933, he was working to introduce legal safeguards for ethnic, religious, and social groups at
international forums, but without success. When the German army invaded Poland, he escaped from Europe, eventually reaching safety in the US, where he took up a teaching position at Duke University. He moved to Washington, DC, in the summer of 1942, to join the War Department as
an analyst and went on to document Nazi atrocities in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In this text, he introduced the word "genocide."
"By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnicgroup. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practicein its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos(race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).... Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of
different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as
an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group" (80).
He later served with the team of Americans working to prepare the Nuremberg trials, where he was able to get the word"genocide" included in the indictment against Nazi leadership. But "genocide" was not yet a legal crime, and the verdict at Nuremberg did not cover peacetime
attacks against groups, only crimes committed in conjunction with an aggressive war. While in Nuremberg, Lemkin also learned of the deathof 49 members of his family, including his parents, in concentration camps, the Warsaw ghetto, and death marches.
He returned from Europe determined to see "genocide" added to international law and began lobbying for this at early sessions of the United Nations. His tireless efforts to enlist the support of
national delegations and influential leaders eventually paid off. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Lemkin did not rest with the UN document, but committed the rest of his life to urging nations
to pass legislation supporting the Convention. He died in 1959, impoverished and exhausted by his efforts.
Lemkin's memoirs detail early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians (which most scholars believe constitute genocide), antisemitic pogroms, and other histories of
group-targeted violence as key to forming his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups. As early as 1933, he was working to introduce legal safeguards for ethnic, religious, and social groups at
international forums, but without success. When the German army invaded Poland, he escaped from Europe, eventually reaching safety in the US, where he took up a teaching position at Duke University. He moved to Washington, DC, in the summer of 1942, to join the War Department as
an analyst and went on to document Nazi atrocities in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In this text, he introduced the word "genocide."
"By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnicgroup. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practicein its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos(race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).... Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of
different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as
an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group" (80).
He later served with the team of Americans working to prepare the Nuremberg trials, where he was able to get the word"genocide" included in the indictment against Nazi leadership. But "genocide" was not yet a legal crime, and the verdict at Nuremberg did not cover peacetime
attacks against groups, only crimes committed in conjunction with an aggressive war. While in Nuremberg, Lemkin also learned of the deathof 49 members of his family, including his parents, in concentration camps, the Warsaw ghetto, and death marches.
He returned from Europe determined to see "genocide" added to international law and began lobbying for this at early sessions of the United Nations. His tireless efforts to enlist the support of
national delegations and influential leaders eventually paid off. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Lemkin did not rest with the UN document, but committed the rest of his life to urging nations
to pass legislation supporting the Convention. He died in 1959, impoverished and exhausted by his efforts.
A Case History - The Armenian Genocide
Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers, are marched throughKharpert to a prison in the nearby Mezireh district, April 1915.
Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, translit.: Hayots’ Ts’eġaspanout’youn; Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı and Ermeni Kıyımı) refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million.[125]
The genocide began April 24, 1915, when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, without food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres ignored age and gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace.[126] The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of these events. Mass killings continued under the Republic of Turkey during the Turkish–Armenian War phase of Turkish War of Independence.[127]
Modern Turkey succeeded the Ottoman Empire in 1923 and vehemently denies that a genocide took place. It has resisted calls in recent years by scholars, countries and international organizations to acknowledge the crime. It is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. Lemkin coined "genocide" to describe these events.
No comments:
Post a Comment